by Will James
And then suddenly at that moment a light, bright and dazzling flashed in the dark, blinding everyone. It was almost as if lightning had struck. It illuminated the ugly, angry scene in one extraordinary glare. It lasted long enough to suspend the violence, long enough to glimpse the faces behind the masks, long enough for one person to make a run for it, shouting as he went.
Seconds later others followed. The crowd dispersed almost instantly, like cockroaches in the light, disappearing into the cracks of alleyways and stairwells of flats. The officers sat motionless. The radio crackled with voices. The car up ahead burned with angry flames and black, choking smoke.
CHAPTER 9 – Grosser Tiegarten, Berlin
In the icy darkness of a foreign country, Zack sat alone amidst the unfamiliar surroundings. He perched on the edge of a public bench in the park for a short while, building up his energy force, trying to get his bearings. He knew what he was looking for but he hadn’t found it yet, despite walking round the park several times. He drew his hoodie closer about his ears, not wanting to be noticed, the old habit of making himself as small and as invisible as possible kicking in. He was glad he couldn’t feel the cold; the ice on the bench beside him was glinting in the moonlight.
He watched a small gang of boys skateboarding along the paths towards the entrance and decided to give his search another go. He followed them, jogging alongside, smiling when one of them stopped to zip up his jacket, suddenly feeling an icy chill in the air.
“Es wird kälter, lasst uns nach Hausekommen!” he shouted to his friends.
He skated faster to catch them up and at the entrance they disappeared. Zack looked at the park map. He decided to start from the beginning and scour the entire place one more time. The park was creepy though and there was no shifting the feeling on the back of his neck that made the hairs stand on end. He set off and wished he wasn’t alone – a strange thought for a boy who’d spent his entire life as a loner.
He walked through the entire German park, which was neater and tidier than any of the parks he remembered from his childhood in Newcastle, keeping to the paths and found himself back at the entrance before long. He checked the map again; he must have missed the path off to the right. It didn’t help that the place names were all in German. He set off, deciding that this would be the final time, and followed the path, slowing right down when he came to a small patch of woods, searching the ground for any sign of a path off to the right. He stopped. There it was. He followed it, into the dark woods and finally he emerged at a small area designed to be a children’s playground.
Gosh this had been difficult to find – and it was really creepy. No wonder this was the place they’d chosen to... He stopped himself thinking about what had happened and walked across the play area to the wall at the back of it marked with circles for throwing tennis balls at. He walked along the length of it and there, right at the bottom, near the ground, were the strange markings that he had flown over to see.
Reaching into his pocket Zack took out his phone, bringing up the newspaper article that he had found in his search of the British Library. He read it again and the story was very strange; strangely connected. It was about an incident where a child had been brutally mugged at the exact spot where he was standing. Nothing particularly headline grabbing about that, muggings were common wherever you went in the world. What was weird, however, was that the child, a young girl of nine, had said that she’d seen a strange white light appear. She thought she was going to die, that they were going to kill her, the gang of three, but the light appeared and her attackers ran. Simply dropped their knives and ran.
Coincidence or connection? Zack was here to find out. Squatting down so that he was at eye level to what he wanted to see, he ran his finger over the etchings in the brick; a series of symbols that now looked familiar. The article had reported the strangeness of the light, but it hadn’t mentioned the symbols. Zack was here on the hunch that he’d find them and it had paid off. They were almost the same as the ones that priest had been talking about – star shaped. What had Dev called them? Constellations? Zack lifted the iPhone and focused really hard. He took a photograph of the markings, put his hands either side of his head and willed it to send. Falling back onto the ground he felt himself fade.
It was nearly dawn when he stirred. The first thing he saw was Molly’s number on the screen – the message had been sent. He got to his feet, noticing that the park didn’t look as tidy or neat in the dull grey light of morning. He made his way back to the entrance and out of the park towards the bus stop for the bus that would take him back to the airport.
*
London
Jenny answered the phone and spoke briefly to her husband. Since Chris had died and he’d gone she didn’t want to talk to him at all. She passed him straight over to Sophie and left the room.
Jake, Jenny’s husband and Chris and Sophie’s dad, waited on the end of the phone for his daughter to speak. He hated these calls; they emphasised his distance from his family and it made him feel sad.
“Hello Daddy.” Sophie came on the line and he thought that his little girl sounded older. He wished he was there to see her grow up. He buried this feeling inside for the moment.
“Hello sweetheart, how’re you today?” He smiled. She always sounded so serious and grown up.
“Fine thank you Daddy. How are you?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “What have you been doing?” He could see her in his mind, sitting on the sofa with the phone in her hand. He wanted to be at home – he wished that things were different.
“We went swimming,” she said, “after school, and we had crisps and some sweets, but Mummy was crying on the way home so we had to stop.” He listened to her day, a jolting pain in his chest as she described Jenny crying in the car.
“I’m sorry that Mummy was upset,” he said. “You have to be patient, it’s very hard for her, without Chris.” It was hard for him too, that was the reason he’d left, the reason that he couldn’t stand being in the house a moment longer – the memories of their son were too painful.
“But you enjoyed the swimming did you?”
Sophie babbled on for a while, describing how many times she’d jumped in from the side of the pool and what sweets she’d chosen. He let her talk run over him like water.
“Daddy, I’d better go now,” Sophie said. Jake focused his attention back.
“OK, where’s mummy darling?” he asked, “Shall I have a quick word with Mummy?” He wanted to talk to Jenny, just check that she was all right and that the upset that afternoon was under control.
“She’s talking to Chris,” Sophie replied, “she’s with him now.”
Jake hesitated then said; “Chris who?”
“Our Chris.”
Jake shook his head and wondered for a moment if this was a joke. “Sophie,” he said, “Chris is dead. Don’t say things like that. It’s not nice Sophie, it’s very upsetting.”
The other end of the line went quiet.
“Sophie?!” Jake suddenly snapped.
“Mummy is talking to Chris,” Sophie said in a small voice.
Jake was about to reprimand her again when he caught the wobble in her voice.
“Where is Mummy?” he asked.
“She’s in Chris’s room,” Sophie said.
Jake didn’t hesitate any longer. He stood up and dug in his pockets for his car keys. Something was wrong with Jenny; crying in the car and now talking to their dead son.
“Sophie I’m going to hang up now,” Jake said, “but I’m coming over, OK? I’ll see you in about...” He calculated how long it would take him in the traffic. “Twenty minutes, OK?”
“OK Dad,” Sophie said. She sounded quite unperturbed by the idea of her Mum talking to herself.
Jake was relieved; kids were so resilient. He hung up and made his way to the front door. He opened it and went outside to the car. He didn’t know what he was going to do when he got home, but he did know that he had to do so
mething.
*
The receptionist watched the young man as he strode up to the front desk. Her colleague was busy on the phone so she smiled, ready to deal with him. He did not smile back. Checking his details and taking his passport number and credit card, she noticed how cold and calculating his stare was. It looked as if he were summarising the lay out of the hotel lobby, mapping it in his mind. It unnerved her. She put his data into the computer and took out a card key, processing it for his room number.
“So that’s a junior suite on the first floor,” she said, smiling as she handed the key over, in the way she’d been trained to do. “If there’s anything else you might want, don’t hesitate to contact us here at the reception desk.”
The young man took the card key and picked up his bag. He said nothing. He walked across to the lift, called it and when it arrived, he stepped inside without a backward glance. The young girl on reception had never, in all the time she’d worked there, ever come across someone quite so rude.
The assassin made his way to the second floor. The junior suite was large and spacious, simple and elegant. It was important to stay somewhere refined; it set the right tone for the job. Opening his bags, he wasted no time in setting up his equipment. First he scanned the room for any hidden cameras or recording devices and next he set up the table as a work station. He had several laptops that were all plugged in to specialist pieces of apparatus and meticulously programmed. He withdrew a world map from his briefcase and tacked it to the wall opposite the table, marking out specific areas with colour coded pins. Although most of his work was electronic, he liked to use a map when he was on a job; it helped him define where it was in the world he needed to focus his attention. Once it was up, he stood back and scrutinised the map, his mind working before placing another pin carefully on it.
There was a knock on the door that broke his intense concentration. He reluctantly walked over to it, opening it just a fraction. A bell boy in his smart uniform stood before him, beaming an official smile.
“Room service,” he said, indicating a tray balanced on his right hand.
“I didn’t order any,” the assassin said sharply.
“It’s complimentary sir,” the bell boy said. He smiled again. “It’s just a basket of fruit and a bottle of Prosecco. Shall I come in and leave it on the side for you, sir?”
The assassin considered for a moment. “No,” he said. There was a moment of silence while the bell boy adjusted his expression. He was shocked; most people liked the free fruit and wine. In fact, he’d never been told ‘no’ before.
“I’ll take it,” the assassin said. “Here.” The boy’s arm trembled slightly as he handed over the tray. “I don’t want any interference in my room,” he added. “Leave anything that’s for me outside.”
“Of course sir,” the boy said. Wait till he told them about this down in the staff room. This guy was a weirdo.
“Good.” The assassin shut the door and returned to his work, instantly forgetting about the food as he set it down. He switched on one of the lap tops and brought up one of the files he had been working on. He pressed print and alongside the lap top, the printer spewed out a copy of a news article in the Metro newspaper several days ago about an attempted mugging in Camberwell.
*
Molly sat on her bed and scrolled through her phone, looking up the latest news stories, stalking people on Facebook who were no longer friends. Dev didn’t do Facebook. More’s the pity she thought; she’d have liked to flick through pictures of him. Stop it, she told herself, you have to stop this. She put the phone down and rolled onto her back, looking up at the familiar posters that lined the ceiling. Trying not to think about Dev she cast around for a subject that might keep her mind busy. Her brain drew a blank. She cursed under her breath, willing it to find something that could alleviate some of her boredom.
Nothing; there wasn’t anything she could think of, except Dev. She let her thoughts drift over the events of the previous day. Then she sat up suddenly, shaking her head in an effort to get rid of the unwanted images inside her mind’s eye, still vivid and painful. Just another catastrophe in a whole year of them she thought; in a year when everything seemed to be going wrong.
The beep of her phone startled her out of her melancholy. Rubbing her eyes to focus them, she looked at the screen. She didn’t recognise the number and immediately thought to delete it. Sometimes she got prank texts from people she used to be at school with – their idea of a joke. She looked at it for a few moments, but her curiosity got the better of her. She opened the image.
Molly stood up, all thoughts of Dev and her unhappiness forgotten. How odd was that? There on the screen, small yet wholly visible was an image of some markings similar to those that Father Tom had shown them on his sheet of paper. She enlarged the image with the tip of her finger. Yup, it was almost identical. She shook her head. Where did this come from and who sent it? She rang the number but it went straight to voice mail. Molly shook her head. Whoever it was knew something that she didn’t. She scrolled through her contacts until she came to Dev. She looked at it for quite some time, but she was still too angry with him to call. She had thought he was different, that he looked past what anyone else thought, but last night he’d been ashamed of her and had hurried her away from his parents, embarrassed by her. Her face burned with indignation. What happened with him yesterday wasn’t something that Molly could easily get past. She ignored his number and decided that she would go it alone. Something odd was going on and Molly herself was going to find out what it was.
CHAPTER 10 - London
Dev’s parents weren’t speaking to him, or at least that was how it felt. They gave him a curt ‘good morning’ but that was as much as he’d got since he’d run off with Molly last night. They were acting as if he had done something terrible he thought, when the reality was that he had escaped their disapproval, nothing more and actually, it was they who were in the wrong; Molly might not be Indian, but she was lovely. Breakfast was going to be awful he realised as he sat down, with no-one speaking and a heavy silence around the table; the mood was rotten.
Whilst they ate, his dad buried himself in the morning paper and his mum studied a recipe for dinner that evening in an effort to ignore him. He had to applaud their determination he thought, usually he couldn’t shut them up with questions about where he’d been, who he was with, what he was working on at the moment. So Dev ate in silence and since his father held onto all the sections of the paper with a mind to teach him a lesson or something to that effect, Dev made do with reading the back of the paper. Fortunately his father held it upright in order to block his son from view so his task wasn’t as difficult as it could have been. Mind you, his glasses needed a bit of a clean. After wiping them on his shirt Dev peered at the back of the paper. His father had folded back the page to page 5, the page with all the human interest stories, errant vicars and celebrities caught out. Dev skimmed it and then a particular story grabbed his attention.
He read it and read it again. Two police officers caught in the middle of a gang face-off had survived unscathed, inside a battered police car because – and here Dev’s mind began to somersault – there had been a freak electric storm, bright white lightening that had scared the youths off. Both officers attested to having seen a light, described as white and dazzlingly vivid. Dev sat back in his chair and thought hard. That light was familiar; eerily familiar.
“Dev, why are you not eating your breakfast? Look, it’s gone cold!”
Dev glanced at his mum. She had looked up from her book and was glaring at his plate. She wouldn’t confront him about seeing an English girl, but if he left his dhal and chapatti he was in big trouble. Talking of English girls, he had to see Molly – she needed to know about this. He jumped up from the table and kissed his mum quickly on the cheek.
“Sorry Mum, not hungry...” he said.
And without a second glance, he rushed to the door, pausing briefly to collect his jacke
t from the coat rack, and was out and on his way to Molly’s house before his father had even put down the paper.
*
Dev arrived at Molly’s house and rang the bell. He waited nervously, peering in through the glass on the front door for any signs of movement. A few minutes later Molly’s mum came to the door.
“Hi, is Molly in?” he asked.
Sandra shook her head. She was still in her dressing gown.
“She left about half an hour ago,” Sandra said.
“Do you know...”
“No.” she snapped. “Why would I know where she is or what she’s doing?! She never tells me anything!”
And with that, she closed the door in Dev’s face. He stood there for a moment then he decided he had better get on with it himself. He really wanted to make it up with Molly, but he also had an awful feeling that lights and weird happenings were connected to his own theory and that was something he had to investigate first.
*
The quiet after the mass was something that Father Tom had always enjoyed. There was a peacefulness to be savoured as he sat alone in the vast space. Today however the silence did not produce its usual calming effect, he had too many things on his mind. He reached down into his pocket and withdrew the silver enamel badge that he had discovered on that strangest of nights. Looking at it closely, he turned it over in his hands as he so often did, knowing every tiny scratch as he traced them with a long forefinger. He got up and walked swiftly down to the back of the church, pausing at the strange markings on the wall. Like the badge he knew the shape well, having often come to view it. He opened the church doors to let in some winter sunshine and encourage people to stop by and pray – as if they ever did – and made his way back to the sacristy.
“Excuse me? Hello?”
Tom stopped and turned. He looked back at the figure in the doorway, young and slim, bathed in pale sunlight.
